The fact that a meeting and a demonstration had been planned for the evening after the meeting with Fredericks actually came as a welcome diversion after dealing with the crisis of the day, and it was a good excuse for John to keep the open community meeting from turning into an hours-long, dragged-out debate.
A small crowd, the team of students and elderly workers who had once labored in the heavy industries of a long-ago industrialized America, was gathered outside the old children’s day care center, rechristened “Montreat Power Station #1,” and actually applauded with enthusiastic delight as John and his family pulled up in the old Edsel.
In a way, it was simply a publicity show and test run; the real turbine and generator were still several weeks away from final placement. What Paul and Becka had set up for the evening’s demonstration was a one-sixth-scale test model housed off to one side of the main floor where the main generator was still under construction.
The pipe from the dam face snaked downslope to the powerhouse, thus adding a dozen more feet of elevation drop from the dam face and thus more energy.
It was obvious that Paul, Becka, and their workforce had been waiting excitedly for his arrival. Elizabeth, her worries of the moment forgotten, bounded out of the car with young and very sleepy Ben in her arms. Makala gently helped John’s aged mother-in-law, Jen, ever the elegant lady even at eighty, as she braced herself and slowly walked down to where the crowd waited, exchanging greetings with old friends and neighbors. Makala fell in behind her, John by her side, both ready to leap forward and grab the fragile woman if she should start to totter. The previous two years had aged her ten, and no one needed to be told that in this terrible new age after the Day, a fall resulting in a broken hip was a lingering and most painful death sentence.
“So how are the wizards of electricity?” John asked cheerfully as he approached the waiting crowd in the gathering gloom.
There were warm smiles and handshakes all around. John suggested that the two who first cooked up the idea offer a brief explanation of what they had accomplished. Paul was eager to go into a tech-laden lecture, but after a few minutes, Becka simply leaned up, kissed him on the cheek, and lovingly put a hand over his mouth.
“He’ll go on all night like that,” she said with a laugh. “He even does it in his sleep. Doc, we got a good head of water coming through the pipe; all we need to do is open the valve that feeds into our model turbine. Would you do us the honors?”
John shook his head and smiled. “You guys built it. You turn it on.”
They hesitated, and he sensed they were nervous. They had actually resisted testing this out until now, so no one was sure all those old diagrams and their months of hard labor actually would amount to something. They were fearful a premature test run might blow apart all they had labored for so far. The two looked at each other and the several dozen who had worked with them throughout the winter and into the spring. The crowd laughed and urged them on. Together, they stepped into the powerhouse, and a joke was shouted that now was not the time to make out in the dark but to get to work.
“I’m not sure how long she’ll run, so here goes!” Paul shouted through the open doorway, and together he and Becka first opened a valve that diverted water from the overflow pipe, shifting it to run against the turbine blades of their test model. All could hear a vibrating rumble as the turbine began to turn faster and faster, coming up to speed, as Paul watched an old-fashioned gauge monitoring the RPMs. He said something to Becka, the two barely visible inside the gloomy exterior of the control room. Together, they took hold of a switch that John thought looked like something straight out of a Frankenstein movie and forced it down to connect the generator and bring it to life.
A gasp erupted from the small crowd. Light! Electric light!
Electric lighting, not seen in their valley for over two years, shined forth from a community power station. Old hundred-watt bulbs inside the power station instantly flashing into brilliant darkness-shattering life. A string of bulbs along the roofline of the building began to glow as Paul and Becka threw a second switch, and even a salvaged string of Christmas bulbs draped along the eaves of the small power station, the same lights that had once decorated the campus tree every winter, sparkled in their multicolored hues.
“Ben, look at the lights, the lights!” Elizabeth shouted as she hugged her squirming toddler, who was now awake and pointing at the multicolored Christmas lights, squealing with laughter.
John pulled Makala in closer, hugging her. He looked over at his grandson’s shining face, and tears came to his eyes. The child, for the first time, was seeing what half a dozen generations before him had experienced from their first seconds of life and knew throughout their lives. And now those around him were laughing and cheering. And then, as an added thrill to it all, music! An old-fashioned boom box Becka had mounted on a windowsill came to life, blaring out an old song—“Blinded by the Light.” Within seconds, all were dancing to the music, laughing and cheering like wild children, some of the elderly in the crowd showing the college kids how to form up for a line dance.
Then the music seemed to go slightly out of beat, slowing down and then speeding up, reminding John of when he was a kid and he and his friends would put 45 RPM records on and crank the player up to 78 RPM and think it wildly funny. The hundred-watt bulbs glowed with hot intensity. One winked off, and another actually burst, and before Paul could throw the switch off, the Christmas lights shorted out.
The music and dancing stopped, and the scent of ozone filled the air. Becka raced back inside the power station to switch the water back to the outflow pipe. A grinding sound came from the turbine housing as its blades clattered to a stop. The crowd outside stood silent, not sure how to react.
John quickly stepped forward, breaking the tension, clapping his hands. “Bravo, you guys! Magnificent!”
The two engineers peeked out nervously from the power station building, ready with excuses and explanations about this being a test run, that the real turbine would be far more finely tuned and that they still had to get more precise with Tesla’s alternating generator system, but they were drowned out by the enthusiastic applause and hugs from their coworkers, the uproar growing even louder when Becka let slip that she could not be picked up and tossed around because she was expecting. The promise of any new life in their so tragically depleted community was greeted with laughter, cheers, and more than a few ribald jokes about what had been going on in the library basement other than research.
John and Makala worked their way through the crowd, and the act took on something of a ritual as John warmly grasped Paul’s hand, congratulating him first on the good news with Becka and then for their miraculous achievement with the power plant.
Makala warmly embraced Becka. “First thing in the morning, I want you to stop by so we can talk over your diet, and Paul, let this lady rest for a while. If need be, the power plant can wait; your baby is far more important to us.”
Far too many pregnancies had been lost in the first year after the Day, and more than a few mothers actually died due to malnourishment. The entire community now gave top priority to expectant mothers. For John, there was a flash memory of the sacrifice he had decided on for Elizabeth, the death of their beloved golden retriever, Ginger, a decision he had made without hesitation and which still filled him with tears.